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17 November 2014

Peter Hopkirk - Historian of 'The Great Game'

The journalist and historian, Peter Hopkirk, who sadly passed away on August 22nd at the age of 83, was
one of my favourite writers. Like many people interested in the history of Western
Imperialist incursions into Central Asia his books were really the first to
open up this fascinating area of history in a way which was deeply engaging. Reading
his books I found his enthusiasm and empathy for the historical figures he
wrote about truly infectious.

I first came across his books in the bookshop of Shanghai Museum, whilst I was working there on an exhibition, in the summer
of 2006. During that time I found myself avidly racing through the pages of his Trespassers on the Roof of the World(1982),
and, the wonderfully titled, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road(1980) – which I think is possibly one of the most
enticing history book titles I’ve ever come across! Hopkirk’s books are those
rare things, they are both eloquent and pacy, gripping and informed,
page-turners with a true purpose – they convey a wealth of historical detail
and are genuinely hard to put down ... If you’ve not read any of Peter Hopkirk’s
books yet, stop reading me and pick up one of his books immediately!

Finding his books at that particular
time and place was a wonderful example of happenstance. I’d already begun to
contemplate the idea of seriously researching the life of Louis Magrath King,
and here were a couple of books which seemed to tie in to that very same past
world. Having worked in museums for a number of years already, my interest in collectors
and their collections – the often untold or even unknown stories of how certain
objects from isolated and relatively inaccessible parts of the world began
their journeys towards today’s museum showcases – was something which already
fascinated me deeply. And happily I found that these two books by Peter Hopkirk
were a treasure trove of such tales and anecdotes.

Interestingly enough, it was the
story of the Bower manuscript, which Hopkirk recounts in both Foreign Devils on the Silk Road and Trespassers on the Roof of the World,
which initially caught my interest the most. I’d already begun efforts to piece
together Louis King’s family tree and I knew he had forbears on his father’s
side who had the surname Bowers, and, naturally enough, I wondered if there might
perhaps be some connection there. I’ve not yet found a direct family connection
between Louis King and Hamilton Bower (if there was any connection that Louis
himself had known of, I’m sure he would almost certainly have made mention of
it), yet there is a connection of a different sort – in that Tibetan artefacts
collected by both men sit alongside each other in the showcases of the present Asia
Gallery in the British Museum.

I’m not sure I really knew at the
time that I was first reading Hopkirk’s books whilst staying in Shanghai,
but the connections to Louis King are certainly there – in the first sentence
of the first page of his first book in fact, which begins with a direct quote
from Louis’s close friend and colleague, Sir Eric Teichman. Like Louis,
Teichman had been stationed for a time at Tachienlu and had also travelled
extensively in the surrounding region of East Tibet known as Kham. As my
researches progressed I constantly found myself looking back to Hopkirk’s books
as other prominent ‘players’ in the history of the Great Game, which Hopkirk
chronicles so well, were contemporaries who would have known and been known to
Louis himself – people such as Sir Charles Bell, Captain Eric Bailey, General
George Pereira, Alexandra David-Neel, and, even Lord Curzon.

More than this though, Hopkirk’s
books seemed to link with my own world, as in the years that followed I made
numerous journeys of my own to Asia. And during these travels I’ve often found
my mind wandering back to certain passages or images which were first conjured
in the pages of his books. I remember watching a beautiful sunset over the
Taklamakan desert from the window of a cargo plane when I was on my way back to
Shanghai once again in 2008. I remember looking down at the Taklamakan and thinking
of Sven Hedin and Marc Aurel Stein.

Our plane had spent five hours on
the ground at Baku in Azerbaijan, where my travelling companion and I hadn’t
been allowed to get off the plane. Not content with following the Silk Road by
air from one of its many starting points in the West, my feet itched to get out
here and continue our journey overland instead. Soon after we soared off the
runway and headed out over the glittering waters of the Caspian Sea I was sat
up in the cockpit, poring over the pilot’s maps, trying to work out what the
ground features were below. We were passing over places with familiar names: Bokhara,
Samarkand, Tashkent, Kokand, Fergana, Kashgar, and Dunhuang. Hopkirk’s books
undoubtedly added a heady dose of historical spice to my travels and inspired
me to delve ever deeper into a growing interest which soon became a genuine
passion. For a long time I’d been pondering which area of history I wanted to
return to university and pursue, and it was probably the coincidence of my family
connection to Louis King, and my frequent work trips to related parts of Asia, both
lit by the spark of Hopkirk’s books, which finally helped me to narrow down and
channel my focus into a study of Western adventurers in Central and East Asia.

If you look at the traditional
short author’s biography at the start of each of his books you’ll get a brief,
tantalising glimpse into Peter Hopkirk’s own life; which, evidently, was no
less adventurous than some of the historical persons he writes about. Recent
obituary articles written in memory of him give a little more detail, hinting
that a life of Hopkirk would most likely be a fascinating book to read. For
more than twenty years he worked as a foreign correspondent in the great days
of the Fleet Street newspapers, most notably for The Times. As a journalist and traveller he was certainly intrepid,
finding himself twice flung into jail in Cuba and in the Middle East; and even
surviving the hijacking of a plane travelling out of Beirut in 1974, in which
he very courageously mediated with the Palestinian hijackers when the plane
landed in Amsterdam, successfully persuading them to lay down their weapons. Before
becoming a journalist he’d served in the British Army in the King’s African
Rifles, in the same battalion as the young Idi Amin, who later became the
infamous Ugandan tyrant.

In 1999 he was awarded the Sir
Percy Sykes Memorial Medal for his writings and travels by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. Of all his books, perhaps his most personal is the last – Quest for Kim: In Search of Kipling’s Great Game(1996). Part personal travelogue and part literary detective
work, he recounts how he went in search of traces of Kipling’s original
inspiration for the real locations and historical characters on which Kipling
had based his famous and much loved novel. Reading Quest for Kim over the last month, as well as dipping back into
his other books, this final work really shines with all of Hopkirk’s personal passions:
the immersive joys of historical research; getting lost in libraries and
emerging to follow up various leads and loose ends; tracing the shadowy, long
forgotten dealings of imperial espionage; unearthing accounts of personal
endurance and adventure; reflecting on his love of language and the written
word; and, not least, acknowledging his deep rooted captivation by all the
classic ingredients of a first rate ‘Boy’s Own’ storyline – something which
clearly remained with him all his life from his early boyhood days when he’d
first discovered John Buchan's 'Richard Hannay' novels, and, of course, Kipling’s Kim. Happily for us, Hopkirk’s own books are just as captivating
and enjoyable as these greats which he loved.

List of Works by Peter Hopkirk (1930-2014)

Foreign
Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia (John
Murray, 1980)

Trespassers
on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet (John Murray,
1982)

Setting
the East Ablaze: Lenin’s Dream of an Empire in Asia (John Murray, 1984)

The
Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (John Murray, 1990)

On
Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Great Game and the Great War (John
Murray, 1994)

Love these books - Initially I read them because they fed my passion for mountaineering and exploration of the Himalayas and the remote parts of East Asia. But these books fuelled my sense of wunderlust which eventually led me to travel/work in some of these regions. I frequently revisit The Great Game for inspiration and recommend it to any of my colleages who travel to Afghanistan - it is a 'must read' book for those who travel to this region. I recon I have given away about five copies of this book and it never comes back. Hopkirk books are real 'life changers' for me.